Cabra (goat) and cultural issues of animal metaphors

Abstract

The vision of an embodied mind which joins the Theory of Conceptual Metaphor is, above all, based on the idea of a mind which results from the interaction between the human sensory-motor program and the physical and social-cultural environment. However, claiming the existence of what he calls the paradox of metaphor, Gibbs (2008) identifies a tension between the universal and variational aspects of metaphors. From this perspective, this article discusses the role of knowledge and cultural norms in the constitution of animal metaphors, especially in the conceptualization of man in terms of cabra (goat) by members of the Fortaleza-Ceara community in northeastern Brazil. For this purpose, the article is organized in four sections, apart from an introduction. In three sections, we discuss the cultural model of the Great Chain of Being and its relation to animal metaphors based on Kövecses (2010) and Lakoff and Turner (1989); the issue of universality in Conceptual Metaphors according to Kövecses (2005; 2009); cultural variation of metaphors with emphasis on the animal metaphor cabra (goat) based on Kövecses (2009) and Rodriguez (2009). In the fifth and last section final considerations are presented which point to the animal metaphor cabra (goat) of an example of Conceptual Metaphor both potentially universal since it maps in the generic level the conceptual domains human being and animal, as well as variational since the cross domain mappings of man and cabra (goat) are motivated by norms and shared cultural knowledge among the members of the Fortaleza-Ceara community.